Jachut

In all fairness, not having a protein "goal" doesnt mean you dont eat protein, when I've counted out of interest, I've averaged 60g. Many bandsters CAN eat enough in a day to get that. I obviously get enough - have good hair, nails, skin, have lost weight, plenty of energy, etc etc. I dont need to drink it at all. Sixty grams isnt that difficult to get for everyone.

I think its just a case of more fill, really. And do your darndest till then to stay on a reasonable diet. And exercise, LOTS!

I voted none. My doc never set one, its not the focus in Australia, not sure why we do it differently. I never think about protein.

The kickstart it gave me enabled me to put in place the necessary lifestyle changes. I will go to my grave declaring that its my running that has had the most impact on weight loss and keeping me thin, not what I eat, I'm no perfect eater, not by a long shot. But the band enabled me to lose enough weight to begin running, to get quite good at it and from then on I was committed to it. Now, the band keeps me on track. It does not make me choose good foods and I can still eat quite a lot but in general, unless I were to really cheat the band with ice cream and chocolate - which I have enough willpower not to do - I dont gain when I'm being slack - like on holidays, or over Christmas when diet is not my focus, I still dont gain weight. I can always decided to be strict and lose more, but I dont then fall off the wagon and gain it back. And I TOTALLY agree with the gobbling thing - a lot of my previous binge foods, the satisfaction was in shoving it down my pie hole faster than the speed of sound. Huge bites, one or two chews, swallow. McDonalds eaten in tiny mouse bites chewed 100 times is actually a pain in the arse, its not much fun at all. I cant be bothered. Same with cake and stuff like that, I have to eat it soooooo slowly that the explosion of taste and texture (drooling just thinking about it, lol) just isnt there, like when you eat it in big bites. I cant be bothered with that either.<!-- google_ad_section_end --><!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

I've never let my weight stop me doing anything, and I was lucky never to go above a BMI of 36 but this weekend I've done my Austswim certificate - I'm starting work as a swim teacher to supplment my studies - and it was just so darn GOOD to not be the fat one in the class. In a class of 40 or so doing the weekend course, lots of beautiful young 18 to 25 year olds, plus a few of us late 30's, early 40's people, and as one of the older ones, I had NO shame about spending two days in a bathing suit amongst strangers. None at all, in fact I felt great and was in better shape than half the younger ones. I did almost start a swim teaching job four or five years ago - it didnt work out due to child care issues - and whilst I was keen, I was frantic at the thought of having to walk around in front of staff and parents in a bathing suit. I would have felt awkward and uncomfortable.

I've never had a problem flying, never even mentioned my lap band, never set off the metal detector.

My initial reaction is no, I dont have issues. I have good relationships, a good life, nothing traumatic has ever happened to me, I have plenty of money and education to be able to eat well and know how to look after myself, I simply have a body that likes to be heavier. But upon really honest self reflection, I'm lazy, I like lying around doing nothing much, I can be half arsed in my effort at things that are a chore, and my eating and exercise habits, not to mention my spending and housework habits, reflected that. Big effort sometimes, keep up the facade so that nobody thought I was a complete pig, the house was always Okish and could be pulled into shape for visitors, we dont have a $30,000 credit card debt and I never got *really* fat, but I was basically slovenly and immature in my approach to those areas of my life. I decided to grow up basically. So yes, that would be my issue. Laziness and lack of attention to detail. But child abuse, a bad relationship with my mother, a stressful marriage - I'm lucky not to have any issues like that. I defintiely dont eat to damp down some inner demon.

I found that I still lost weight, but that my meal size took several fills to really come down. It reduced by about 1/3 initially and then over the coming months and more fills I got down to about 3/4 of a cup of food per meal. I had a burst of restriction after each fill that waned very quickly, so I lost a few kilos then maintained (or lost slowly) to the next fill. Your body gradually reduces its calorie needs as you lose weight, and at first most people can probably eat quite well and still lose, I'd try to fill in the gap with exercise and relax about it, let your intake reduce as your fill levels increase. You no doubt need a second fill pretty soon, but you dont have to starve to death, if you're hungry, eat reasonable, just try not to overeat. Good restriction and constant, steady weightloss takes some people a while to achieve, and others like me find that they lose anyway, but that they need that increasing restriction over time to keep losing.

You see this a lot and I truly believe its part of a fat mentality. I believe there are some people who are always destined to become obese, due to their personalities. There are common threads that you can pick up on when you have been on a weight loss forum for a long time, and you can see that people have allowed their obesity to occur because of the way they view things, life and their own behaviour. The VERY biggest event in anyone's weight loss journey, I believe, is the point where they truly realise that THEY are responsible for their own behaviour and that excuses cheat nobody but themselves. You do see it happen, quite often, where people pass that point. Its possible to change yourself. In no way do I mean to be condescending or superior about that because I had it to, I believed obesity happened to me, now I know that I did it myself with laziness, lack of focus, refusal to face reality, justification for the self defeating behaviours, taking no responsibility and not being prepared to tackle what I knew lay ahead if I was to beat it. How a lapband helped that I dont know, but it does, perhaps limit what your body can tolerate and the head follows if you're lucky, but I remember quite clearly my moment (which happned before I was banded) when I just decided ENOUGH! Stop kidding yourself, grow up. Since banding I have also tackled and overcome other problems in my life, overspending (nothing serious but just not sticking to our budget, unfair to everyone in the family), laziness around the house, etc etc.

If our trampoline wasnt half wrecked with the springs all broken through the mat, I would, for sure. Its a great workout, I've jumped on it before, but we only have a small one, 80kg max (170lb or so) and I was too heavy. Now its too broken, lol. We're getting a new one soon, and I will be jumping on it. And in all seriousness - its GREAT for strengthening your pelvic floor. I escaped 3 babies in pretty good shape but trampolinining is challenging, lol. If you get on and jump, do a few seat drops and twists you'll realise just how much core strength you've lost since your teens too. Its a fantastic workout and I plan on hopping on our new one. Your heart rate shoots through the roof too!

Ah, that makes sense, thanks.

I really agree with that, it much more reflects what I do. I hate weights, cant bear them unless its a machine, which I dont have access to at home. I much prefer to do push ups, squats, lunges, tricep dips etc and I've developed hard muscles as a result. Maybe not as good for sculpting but I have no real desire to look sculpted anyway.

Oh, it feels so fantastic to walk past the plus sized shops. Never ever ever will I go into one again. Congrats on buying a normal size. It is so fantastic to be able to buy fashionable clothes, buy what you need without paying double the price for it, and just race out and pick something up for that dinner or whatever.

The thing is, I've gone from large framed to small going by that formula! I really could only tell what my frame size is once I'd got a lot of weight off. At 73kg I'm smack in the middle of my healthy weight range, but I have too many bulgy bits and rolls, lol, therefore I need to be low in my healthy weight range to have fewer inches to pinch. So I'm small framed but tall. I would ALWAYS have called myself large framed, its somewhat of a surprise that I"m really not.

No it wont, you'll pay the full specialist visit fee and get no rebate back on it. So it could be as much as $120, $150 or so, which is what my surgeons' fee was for a standard consultation - not sure if he'd charge for the fill over and above that.

That's what I'd do, email a few surgeons. I actually dont pay anything for fills, they're bulk billed.

Its more common to have to do a liquid diet with Optifast or similar, which I would think, short term or not, would be far healthier than the induction phase of Atkins. These are higher protein/low carb but perfectly balanced for you. You're right, two weeks of a high fat diet wont kill you but it wont do great things for you either, I cannot for the life of me see how its good preparation for surgery. But what I've never really understood, somebody will be able to explain - by what process does the liver actually shrink? As in, why does two or three weeks of a very low calorie diet shrink it?

Everyone has trigger foods, often different but common ones are bread, dry meats, stringy vegetables. But any food can stick, if you take too big a bite, dont chew enough, dont concentrate whilst eating, or happen to run into some unexplained tightness (stress, hot day, period time, etc). You get unstuck in a number of ways - you will slime (produce tons of saliva that you cant swallow), have pain in the chest and then productive burp which sounds so sedate the way others describe it, open mouth, expel problem food. If you're like me, after the warning I just ate a golfball and its lodged in my chest feeling, massive sliming for like an hour followed by a very violent, very loud chunder. Which is just like vomiting, but without nausea - for some reason, horrid as it is its way less traumatic than nauseous vomiting which still makes me cry like a baby. But for me, PBing is not something I could hide in public, it would be supremely embarrassing if it happened anywhere other than at home, but thankfully its happened three times in 2 years. For others it happens more often but is quick and not always so embarrassing and obvious.

I dont quite get you. You post a rather inflammatory question and then you say that you meant superior in terms of newbies not being allowed to view the R&R but the way you're talking definitely makes it sound like you mean exactly what I initially thought you meant and reacted to- that you're fed up with oldies who've lost all their weight thinking they're all that. Actually, there's quite a few points in Green's post that I can identify with. I've not been a perfect bandster by any stretch of the imagination and I've often said the first six months were so easy, I lost so much weight without even having to try, it just fell off. Since then I've had to battle. But I've never dieted, I dont count calories, I dont count protein, I eat what I want when I want and its just, well, worked. I run lots becuase I bloody love running, not because I've got superior willpower and determination. I've never said otherwise. I've been really lucky becuase I"ve lost weight on about 1500 calories a day, so its certainly been easier for me than it has for others. I've certainly learned a few things along the way and I've shared them. But I can think of about a thousand posts where I've mentioned my pretty slack and easygoing approach to weightloss and where I've told people that a binge is just that, and that you can simply get back on the wagon, but dont waste time beating yourself up over it. I just dont really understand what it is you're getting at. So you think oldies do think they're superior and that gets up your nose? Or you dont? If you do, I really dont think you've read enough of this forum.

Are you serious?. An athlete may have a higher BMI than normal due to muscle weight but we're talking about denying entry to really obese people, not to someone overweight. And an athlete, no matter how muscled, is not going to have a BMI that places him in the morbidly obese category. Well maybe one of those Eastern European shotputters, crikey! They're rather large.

Well I think it does, I think Atkins has the potential to be horrendously unhealthy, but I seem to be the only person that thinks so, lol. forgive me but if you eat meat, cheese and bacon and put cream in your coffee, and limit fruit, grains and even some vegetables, you're not doing yourself many favours, whether it shrinks your liver or not. I'd try to do it in as low a saturated fat/cholesterol manner as possible.

Are you sure you're not sick with a stomach bug?

With abdominal work, I remember being told in aerobics classes way back in the 90's (I dont know how true this is) but you must be very careful to pull your belly button to your spine and not blow out your belly when you do crunches etc - I hope you can visualise what I mean, sometimes, you hold your breath and push out during the effort. Rather, try to hold your belly in very hard, pulling your navel towards your spin. If you dont do this, it can make your belly bulge, you're not getting max benefit from the exercises. I dont quite understand HOW it could make your abdomen bulge out more, but that's what they used to say.

Its not enough, sad to say. 30 minutes a day may keep you out of the cardiac ward but to really lose fat you need more like an hour of harder cardio six days a week or so. Once you see the results it brings you its not so hard to do. Start with walking, do what you can. Plan on building up, you dont ever have to run if you dont want to but you will have to walk very HARD. You really need to get the heart rate up and sweat. Take some music, or a friend or try something else if you dont enjoy walking all the time.

7.05 pm. Kids are watching Futurama. We've just had steamed mini dim sims and vege fried rice (brown) for dinner. I'm about to pour a wine and Doug will be home soon so its the end of my computer time.